Washington Post retreat from Asia is a reminder of American insularity

straitstimes.com · Mar 1, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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SINGAPORE -- The surprise was not that The Washington Post (WaPo) laid off journalists, the shock was that one of America’s most venerated journalistic institutions decimated about a third of its employees in one fell swoop. The deep cuts announced in early February gutted, among others, WaPo’s award-winning stable of foreign correspondents, leaving only two known reporters remaining in Asia and indeed the Indo-Pacific – a term the Americans use to refer to the region spanning the Indian and Pacific oceans – which remains of utmost economic, military and strategic importance to the US in countering China’s might.The paper’s shrinking coverage of the world at a time of immense global change underscores a deepening American insularity and the lack of general American interest in international developments, accentuated in the age of Trump.“It’s a tragedy because it’s avoidable,” said writer and journalist James Fallows, whose long association with The Atlantic magazine began after working as US President Jimmy Carter’s speechwriter in the late 1970s. In reportedly laying off more than 300 of its roughly 800-strong newsroom, WaPo’s executive editor Matt Murray blamed mounting losses that had gone on for far too long, telling newsroom employees that the company had not met readers’ needs amid the declining subscriptions. Many observers suggest the paper’s financial woes were aggravated by politically driven decisions. Editors resigned and subscribers cancelled after owner Jeff Bezos reportedly blocked the publication of a presidential endorsement of Ms Kamala Harris 11 days before the 2024 election, refashioning the opinion desk to cover only personal liberties and free markets.“Bezos’ sickening efforts to curry favor with President (Donald) Trump have left an especially ugly stain of their own. This is a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction,” former WaPo editor Martin Baron said on Feb 2, shortly after the layoff announcement.This was a sharp reversal for Mr Bezos, the founder of Amazon who bought the paper for US$250 million in August 2013 amid great hopes and fanfare for a meaningful rejuvenation for one of America’s most storied journalistic organisations. More than a decade later, the American capital’s newspaper of record now no longer has any reporters in Greater China, India, the Middle East and the Ukraine war zone, despite its overt pretensions towards a national security focus. Its Seoul and London regional breaking news hubs, established in late 2020, are also no more.One reporter who covered South-east Asia remains in Singapore, with another in Tokyo, who covered Japan and Korea. This is bad news for the paper’s core readers, who live and work in the DC area, including the neighbouring Virginia and Maryland suburbs. Many are professionals working in policy, politics and other adjacent sectors, who rely on a multitude of information sources to help them make complex decisions that could well affect the world. They now have one fewer source of robust and comprehensive on-the-ground reportage. American news outlets with foreign bureaus have reported on and embarked on investigations not just on the US government and its foreign policy, but into developments across the world.“In many ways, we’re really not just an American institution, but also kind of global,” said Mr Gerry Shih, who has reported from Beijing, New Delhi and, until the recent layoffs, Jerusalem, since joining the paper in 2018. Mr Shih was a Pulitzer finalist for International Reporting in 2023 for his work exposing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s social media campaigns aimed at fanning communal tensions while pressurising American Big Tech to bend to his agenda at a time when the Biden administration was cultivating India as a strategic counter to China in the Indo-Pacific. He won the Osborn Elliott Prize for excellence in Asia coverage in 2020, awarded by Asia Society, for his “wide-ranging and penetrating coverage” of China – including Beijing’s use of a hidden military base in Tajikistan, the disappearance of student activists at Peking University and the plight of former labourers in Shenzhen who were stricken by lung disease. Until Mr Shih and several other correspondents from The New York Times, WaPo and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) were expelled from China at the height of US-China tensions in 2020, foreign correspondents based in the major Chinese cities were often the only journalists reporting sensitive information.“So when The Washington Post goes, that’s one less outlet that’s doing that kind of work,” he said. The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced major job cuts on Feb 4, saying that “painful” restructuring was needed at the storied newspaper.PHOTO: AFPThe business-focused Bloomberg News and The New York Times now count as the American news outlets with the most extensive networks of foreign bureaus. WSJ also pared its foreign bureaus in several rounds of consolidation in the last decade. “Having bureaus in specific places is so important, versus parachute journalism when somebody comes in from outside,” said Mr William McKenzie, an editorial adviser to the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. “If I were to go write something about India – and I’m not an India expert – you’re getting what I know and what I do in a two-week reporting period,” he said. “But if you are based there, you’ve got sources within the government and the communities and you can provide a texture and a nuance, the kind of reporting with more depth.”Of course, WaPo is not the only source of international news for American audiences.Most, if not all, news outlets carry stories from only a handful of international news wires such as British-founded Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse. There is also a sizeable American readership of The Economist, the Financial Times and The Guardian.“When it comes to awareness of Asia, (Americans) who want to know about Asia can still read The New York Times instead, or they can go to various websites,” said Mr Fallows.Still, the struggles of mass market general interest news outlets contrast with the relative success of trade publications or niche publications serving narrow interest groups.Soya bean farmers in the American Mid-west are one such niche group. China is the largest market for American soya bean producers, yet for six months in 2025, the US exported no soya beans to China due to a capricious trade war. Although exports have since resumed, the American Soybean Association said in January that farmers need greater assistance after “historic losses to China”.Mr Fallows said: “Every soya bean farmer in the US knows import patterns, especially in China, but through the rest of Asia, so interestingly, people you might think of as part of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) base are more sophisticated about Asia as an economic entity than the typical university student who just lives in New York or Boston.”But the value of general reportage in dispelling ignorance among the wider public – and indeed among politicians – should not be taken lightly.“I think the most perilous part is security discussions involving China, where American policymakers – whatever side they are on – are mainly operating out of stereotypes, as opposed to firsthand knowledge,” he added.Union members and supporters gather at a 'Save the Post' rally outside The Washington Post after widespread layoffs were announced, on Feb 5.PHOTO: REUTERS“The stereotypes about China vary widely and are often contradictory: China is all-powerful or it’s about to collapse; it’s way ahead in technology or it will never catch up; Chinese leaders always cheat or Chinese leaders are about to make big, beautiful deals.“What these all have in common is ignorance about the complexities and realities of China – a situation that has gotten only worse in a resentment-driven era of US politics and policy,” said Mr Fallows, a seasoned foreign correspondent who lived outside of the US for almost two decades in total, including stints in China, Japan and Malaysia.“We’re in a very extreme stage under the Trump administration, of Americans with power looking inward and many other Americans feeling as if the battle for democracy is within the United States,” he added. But it looks like business realities have clashed with the loftier missions of journalism, with the latter losing out.To understand The Washington Post’s place alongside The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal as America’s leading national news outlets is to consider how it will always be synonymous with the Watergate scandal in the 1970s that ultimately led to US President Richard Nixon’s resignation.Guided by an anonymous source known as “Deep Throat”, two WaPo reporters, Mr Bob Woodward and Mr Carl Bernstein, exposed the Nixon administration’s misuse of federal agencies and tactics against his political opponents.That episode was a classic demonstration of the role of the US press as the “fourth estate” as it has historically served as an independent watchdog, checking on the legislature, executive and the judiciary, while shaping public discourse in the process. This continues to be underpinned by the First Amendment in the American Constitution, which enshrines rights and freedoms relating to religion, speech, the press, assembly and petition.That this obliteration of the paper occurred in the 50th year since the release of All The President’s Men – the movie about this investigation – is a bitter coincidence, but it also underscores the stark decline of WaPo and the broader news media in the time since.Waves of technological disruptions in at least the last three decades have upended business models for news media, leading to many closures of local and regional US news outlets. Many are still grappling with generating and maintaining new revenue streams, so it is perhaps understandable most outlets have cu